Where She Stops Running
by fluggerbutter
Summary: How smart could she be, if this is where she's wound up?


The tragedy of it is that she knew better.

She knew better than to trust a man who was slowly losing his mind to manuscripts, residue, the indecipherable relics of a people long dead.

She knew better than to pickpocket unsuspecting folk on the tube. (He thinks he knows but he doesn't. It may not have been her the one time; he may have saved her from herself, but before him she had no qualms about petty crime.)

She knew better than to pretend to be the very thing she wasn't—trustworthy, dependable, smart.

How smart could she be, if this is where she's wound up?

Boots splayed out in front of her as she sits at the edge of the end car of a train she hasn't paid the ticket for, clinging too tight to the silver railing. Alone. Her tears are silent but they spill from her eyes and escape with the wind, free and undeterred, more so than she will ever be. They are so astoundingly pretty as they leave her eyes like rain. (A silly thought flits by and she entertains it for the briefest moment: perhaps they will water a flower somewhere and she will be the cause of some beauty in the world instead of destruction.)

The closest thing she has to family is in prison, and in no way does she deserve the closest thing she has to a friend. She forces the thought of _him _down like bile. It hurts too much and it shouldn't because she made the choice she betrayed him she's never _been _anything but a liar and _why did he trust her why does he still trust her _she is not worth his time and never has been _oh_, heaven help her; she prays to empty skies that he does not ever think of her and feel such hurt.

She hopes he hates her. Knows he doesn't. And it is this that causes her to weep too often, too hard, because at no point in her life had there been any indication that people could be anything other than stupidly selfish and then here he comes, stupidly self-sacrificing, all kind words and soft hands and clever deductions. He is everything she cannot be. He is worth something to the world.

Should she ever find her blood in pretty pools about her shoulders, she thinks, she might smile. For the universe will not be lost without her. It will continue onwards in its beauty, so deeply scarred and yet so _lovely_, and it will treasure him like it could never treasure her. And he—oh, he, with his top hat and quiet smile—will live his life upon sweetly twisting paths of puzzles and pleasure and pain, unknowing of his value, unaware that he is precious in his own right.

Her hair chases longingly after the breeze, desperate to depart her and her pitiful sorrow.

She ought to cut it, free it from its misery.

"Sorry," she says, for she'd like to keep her curls.

But on second thought, she pulls the little Swiss Army knife from the inside of her boot, and observes the shears that glint so teasingly in the noonday sun.

It is quick, fleeting—it reminds her of her first love. Her first lie.

She feels some part of her fall away like a deep sigh as ringlet after ringlet takes to the blue of the stratosphere. She cuts without concern for aesthetics; she cuts because it feels right; she cuts for her liberation. It is only after the blade rents a thin stripe upon her cheek and red drips from her fingers does she put away the knife and dare to breathe freely.

"Good-bye," she calls to the last visible lock. The word is tender on her tongue.

Such _sentimentality. _She is so glaringly stupid. She'd be laughing by now, were she witnessing this scene instead of taking part in it.

Some part of her—some part of _him_ in her—quietly speaks up and says that it is okay to be stupid and sentimental; she is human, after all, and such is part of the package deal. But she bottles up the pale whimsy anyway, like fresh wine, and leaves it to sit upon some shelf buried deep inside. Perhaps one day she'll uncork the feeling and it will smell sweeter in spite of the sadness.

She is human, after all.

Her life is wrought with missteps and mistakes but she is only human.

For some reason she suddenly finds her heart burning like firelight.

_Isn't she?_

And it is less of a question than a terrible, wonderful, realisation.

She trembles with the newfound hope of possibility, now tied down to the railing by nothing but a single hand.

She's only human.

The train rolls to a halt in front of a station she has never seen, which is good, and no one boards, which is better. She leaps off with shorter hair than when she leapt on. There is a cut beneath her right eye, and she is still alone, but she has no more tears to shed, and all is somewhat recovered. This—she can feel it—this is where she stops running, for in the air around her lingers a sense of deep, understanding forgiveness. And it isn't his. It is her own. He forgave her long ago, before he knew what it was she needed forgiving, but now she has found—not justification, but... _something. _There is no excuse here, but there is something like mercy: some absolution. This is where her second chance begins.

She marches west, towards the setting sun. This is newness. This is bright.

This is redemption.


End file.
